


nights can be empty (so you were looking for someone to hold)

by cori_the_bloody



Category: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, And a couple of male OCs, F/M, One Shot, Sharing a Bed, but i'm here to deliver anyway, but they're only in the fic for a second, this is a rearranging and reimagining of 2.12 that no one asked for or needed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-26 11:04:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20388673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cori_the_bloody/pseuds/cori_the_bloody
Summary: “You didn’t tell me you’d be coming,” Rebecca says, voice tight with panic, as she storms into Nathaniel’s office.He sighs. “The point of the trip is to evaluate your performance. I’m supposed to do that from here?”“You can do it from wherever you want, as long as it’s far away from me.”





	nights can be empty (so you were looking for someone to hold)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you, Bethany. <3
> 
> This is just another random fic I wrote because I'm blocked on fake dating, so please just roll with the complete and utter randomness of it all. (Also, I think I unblocked myself on fake dating last night, so everything is coming up roses, actually.)
> 
> Written to fill the prompt "things you said when you thought i was asleep."

“What’s this?” Rebecca asks when Paula slides a long envelope toward her through their cubicle hidey hole.

“Consider it a pre-wedding gift,” she says with a coy smile.

With raised eyebrows, Rebecca flips it open and slides out gift certificates for a spa.

“Thought we could go have some girl time and get you wedding-ready,” Paula elaborates when Rebecca gives her curious look. “Maybe tomorrow after work?”

Pouting, Rebecca says, “I don’t think I’ll have time.”

“Oh, come on, I’m sure Valencia can shift around some items on the itinerary.”

“No—though now that you mention it, Valencia will definitely be a little miffed that you booked me time at a spa she didn’t review and approve first. No, I have to do a thing for Nathaniel.”

Paula frowns.

“Oh, please,” Rebecca says, convincingly offhand despite the fact that the familiar quick sand pit of guilt has opened up under her feet.

It’s good that Valencia took over wedding planning for many reasons, not least of which being the way it stopped her spiral in its tracks. Of course, even as she thinks this, her mind draws forward the memory of her illicit elevator kiss for the umpteenth time.

She clears her throat and continues. “He’s sending me to Brentwood overnight to woo some potential client. Give me some credit.”

“So the goosebumps are no more?”

“Of course not,” Rebecca says. In reality, she can feel them prickling to life along her forearms. She surreptitiously pulls the sleeves of her blouse down over her knuckles.

Paula studies her for a second longer and then shrugs. “We can fit it in later. I just—I feel like we haven’t really _talked _since you and Josh got back together.”

“Right,” Rebecca says. “We should. Do that. I mean, there’s so much to talk about. You let Scott back into the house. I have Josh and…nothing else going on in my life. Big stuff.”

“You sure you’re alright?”

“Fine!” Rebecca fixes an approximation of a convincing smile on her face. “I’m fine.”

“But you definitely need a spa day,” Paula says. “It’ll soothe all those pre-wedding jitters away.”

“I don’t have jitters,” Rebecca says with an uneasy laugh. “Honestly. Jitter free.”

Paula gives her a pained smile.

“Right…so yeah, a spa day. That sounds good,” Rebecca says, clearing her throat and turning back to her computer.

###

As she’s packing up for the day, an email pops up in her work account. The title gives her pause: _Our Travel Arrangements for Tomorrow._

“You didn’t tell me you’d be coming,” Rebecca says, voice tight with panic, as she storms into Nathaniel’s office.

He sighs. “The point of the trip is to evaluate your performance. I’m supposed to do that from here?”

“You can do it from wherever you want, as long as it’s far away from me.”

“It’s not like I’m champing at the bit for more one-on-one time with you,” he says, eyes shifting to her face and quickly away again. “But we all have our orders.”

She rolls her eyes. “Are yours to be an insufferable corporate puppet? Or is that more implicit in the company culture?”

“You’re welcome to quit. Aren’t you one step away from cinching the job _of your dreams_ as a housewife?” he asks with a sneer.

A crisp anger burns up through her esophagus but, even still, she doesn’t give him the satisfaction of that clearly sought reaction. Instead, she smiles coolly. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

“Great. I’ll be picking you up at six.”

She flashes him a sarcastic thumbs-up. “Awesome.”

###

“Oh, hey, Becks!” Josh stops on his way from her bedroom to the bathroom. “I didn’t realize you were home.”

Rebecca looks up from the toaster, a pang of regret zipping around her chest. She’d heard him, of course, but she hadn’t felt like greeting him immediately, instead going right for her stash of bagels.

“Just got in,” she lies with a little frown. Because she’d let Nathaniel get under her skin—bringing him home with her to Josh yet again.

“Cool,” Josh says, bounding around the islet to give her a kiss. “Welcome home.”

“Did you want—?” She gestures to the toaster right as her bagel pops up out of it.

“Nah, I had dinner with Brah after practice.”

Rebecca grins at him, feeling a rush of relief that she doesn’t have to share so heady it lifts her mood. “Okay.”

Josh hops up onto the counter, watching as she applies butter and then cream cheese.

“The kids are really coming along,” he says after a moment.

“Hmm?”

“My team,” he clarifies.

“Oh, right, right, right, right. Basketball. God. Using basketball as a pretense for talking about God.”

Josh nudges her in the side with his foot. “We only pray twice: once before we start, and once at the end.”

She raises her eyebrows, a comment about how superfluous that seems nearly out of her mouth, but Josh soldiers on, saving them from any serious conversations about religion.

“You’re coming, right?”

“To pray?”

“No, silly, to our first scrimmage.”

She takes a bite of her bagel, shooting him a blank look.

“It’s like a game, except it doesn’t count.” He pauses. “Huh, so I guess that also makes it, like, a super-duper practice.”

“Ah, a dress rehearsal,” she says, clicking her fingers and then tapping her temple. “When is it?”

“Tomorrow.”

“That sounds great,” she says, even as she’s thinking about how mind-numbingly _boring_ that sounds, “but I’ve got a work thing—I won’t be home tomorrow night.”

“Aw, bummer,” he says, pouting out his lip. “The kids could really use some of that classic Rebecca Bunch pep.”

“Guess they’ll have to settle for that classic Josh Chan spirit.”

He laughs, but then grows serious, hand grasping her arm and tugging her close. “If you’re not coming home tomorrow night…”

She wills herself to get swept up in the kiss but, as it has been so often lately, her brain simply refuses to cooperate.

###

When Nathaniel pulls up to her house at 6:02 the next morning in a shiny red car, Rebecca’s already waiting for him on the curb, having slid out of bed after a fitful night of sleep over two hours ago.

“Morning,” he says with an acknowledging nod when he gets out to hoist her luggage into the trunk.

Momentarily shocked into silence by the fact that he’s wearing tan slacks and an olive polo shirt, all she can do is gape. It’s not like she’s _really _given it any thought but, well, she’d assumed he wore dark-colored, well-tailored suits everywhere, even to bed.

Aware that she’s been staring too long, she scrambles to say something.

“This is what you drive?” is what comes out of her mouth. “Really?”

He turns to give her a funny look, and she quickly shifts her focus to the backseat, pretending to be absorbed in her observation of his vehicle.

“It’s a rental,” he says flatly.

She snorts, leaning against the door and crossing her arms. “Why? Aren’t we only traveling, like, forty miles?”

“Thirty-five,” he corrects, and she rolls her eyes. “And if we don’t get going, it’ll take us three hours.”

Rebecca opens her mouth to sling a comment back at him, but he cuts her off with the slam of the trunk.

“I doubt you’re any keener than I am to spend three hours with nothing but each other’s company.”

She huffs but, really, there’s no arguing with that. Pouting, she walks around to the passenger side and plops down in the seat.

Nathaniel joins her a second later, buckling his seatbelt and checking the rearview mirror before pulling away from the curb.

She rolls her eyes.

They sit in silence for a few moments, the drone of NPR threatening to lull her to sleep. And since she most certainly can’t let her guard down enough to fall asleep here in confined quarters with Nathaniel Plimpton the Third, she opens her mouth and lets out the first thing that comes to mind.

“Why’d you pick red, of all colors?”

He glances over at her, looking mildly surprised, and then turns quickly back to the road. “You have something against the color red?”

“Not necessarily.”

“So you’re just nitpicking for the sake of nitpicking?”

“Oh no, I’ve dared question the great Nathaniel Plimpton! Now I’m in for it,” she says, mock frightened.

His hands tighten incrementally on the wheel. “Maya made all the arrangements. Take your issue with red up with her.”

Rebecca angles her body toward the window, watching as the scenery blurs together when Nathaniel speeds up to merge onto the freeway. “Whatever.”

He grunts.

Seconds later, though, she says, “Red cars are, like seventy percent more likely to get pulled over for minor infractions, you know.”

“That doesn’t sound right.”

“Fine, then. What’s the statistic?”

“How should I know?”

“If you’re so certain I’m wrong, you must know the right figure.”

“I don’t, but seventy percent sounds hyperbolic.”

“Your face is hyperbolic,” Rebecca says under her breath.

“This is a small car, Rebecca,” he says. “I can hear you.”

“Yeah, well…Focus on the road. You don’t want to get us pulled over. Then we’ll never make our meeting.”

“Fine.”

“Good.” She crosses her arms. “And make sure you note that I’m conscientious of company time and resources in this stupid review.”

“Right after _insubordinate_,” he agrees. “And really not very conscientious of company time.”

She snorts at the comment against her will.

###

They hit traffic about forty minutes later.

As soon as they come to a complete stop, Nathaniel leans over across the center console.

“What are you doing?” Rebecca asks, jerking away.

He sighs—and does she imagine there’s a note of resignation to it?—before sliding a file out of the briefcase tucked by her feet and dropping it onto her lap. “We should do a little prep, make use of our time.”

Her eyebrows shoot up her forehead. “Dude. You are such a nerd.”

He turns sharply to glare at her. “How am I a nerd?”

“You’re the worst kind of nerd,” she says, clucking her tongue with mock regret. “You’re a nerd for your job.”

He shakes his head, turning his attention back to the inching line of cars. “I think they’re calling those workaholics now.”

“So you admit it?”

“I’m not a nerd.”

“You have a boner for the law.”

The upholstery of the wheel squeaks under Nathaniel’s tight grip. “Not everyone who spends less than fifty percent of their workday coming up with excuses to run out of the office is a workaholic. They’re just better at their jobs than you.”

She narrows her eyes at him even though his attention is fixed determinedly on the road. “Kennedy Vincent Price, CFO of Price Enterprises” she recites without opening the folder, “and his on-again, off-again business partner Joseph Watson decided their greatest ambition in life was to start a family-friendly vineyard after making so much money they could retire thrice over. What was supposed to be a passion project turned into a really successful venture and, since rich white men are literally incapable of leaving well enough alone, they’re now looking for a place to start a second location. Our goal is to sell them on our ability to secure them the best land for their money in the beautiful utopia that is West Covina.”

He’s silent for a moment before asking, “So?”

“_So_,” she says, “just because I don’t have a boner for my job doesn’t mean I don’t do my prep work.”

He takes his eyes off the road to give her a look of mingled annoyance and interest. She raises her eyebrows at him when he doesn’t look away.

Coughing to hide his embarrassment, he shifts his eyes back to traffic and says, “You know part of our courting them involves eighteen holes of golf, right?”

“Oh, fuck me.”

“I knew you didn’t read the schedule I sent you.”

He sounds delighted to have caught her slacking again—like everything is once again in its place.

Rebecca frowns out the window, disappoint that he’s managed to win this round. She’ll get him back, though.

###

“Okay,” she says as Nathaniel unloads his clubs from the trunk of the car. A couple of them have custom-made covers on them—a lion and a gorilla. “What are they?”

He glances at his clubs and, curiously, color works its way into his cheeks. “I don’t—”

“The talking points you’ve definitely prepared,” she clarifies.

He exhales and slams the trunk closed. “Don’t you worry about that.”

“What?” She scampers after him as he makes his way toward the clubhouse. “The whole reason I’m here is to worry about it.”

“No, the whole reason you’re here is to prove you’re capable of prioritizing your job.”

She stops in the middle of the parking lot, gaping.

He must sense that she’s no longer following him because, after a second, he stops, too, and turns to face her. “What now?”

“You’re telling me,” she says slowly, “that I traveled all this way—committed to an overnight trip—just to be your freaking caddy while you try to charm a couple of insufferable rich dudes?”

“Of course not,” Nathaniel says, but his smirk tells a completely different story. “We’re gonna rent you some clubs of your own. You’ll be your own caddy.”

“Oh, my god. Do you have any idea how much crap needs doing to pull off a wedding in two weeks?”

His expression hardens, jaw clenching and eyes flashing. “That’s not my problem, right, Rebecca?”

Her nostrils flare and she quivers with the effort it takes to suppress a few choice responses that threaten to spring board directly off her tongue.

After a moment, she manages a deep breath, and then sets off for the clubhouse ahead of him.

“I’m your star attorney,” she says, impressed with how even her voice sounds to her own ears. “It’s stupid to sideline me.”

“Oh,” Nathaniel says darkly. “I’m sure you’ll find some way to contribute.”

###

“You’re awfully quiet. Should I be worried?”

Rebecca jumps and glares up over her shoulder into Nathaniel’s smirking face.

Turning forward to continue watching Mr. Watson’s second-hole drive, she says with no small amount of haughtiness, “I’ve golfed before, you know. I don’t need you to hold my hand.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Good.”

“Fine. You’re up.”

“Yeah. I _know_.”

“And did you know you’re holding a nine wood?”

Rebecca looks down at the club in her hands. “Uh, yeah. I was clearly just practicing my short game.”

“Clearly,” he says, smirk deepening. “Standing here, staring at nothing.”

With a smirk of her own, she swings the club in front of her and then snaps it back, catching him in his right leg just above the knee.

He curses under his breath.

“Hey, you two,” Kennedy Price says, sliding out of his cart. “You’re not talking strategy, are you? I have a strict policy about shop talk on the green. Golf is meant to be a peaceful game, after all.”

“Of course, sir,” Rebecca says, quickly replacing the nine wood in the bag and grabbing the driver. “I don’t know about you, but I find the rush of getting par on a hole practically as good as an orgasm, am I right?”

Nathaniel chokes on air, but Price smiles.

“I’ll drink to that,” Watson says, raising his beer in the air.

Grinning to herself, Rebecca sets up her tee, then turns to waggle her eyebrows at Nathaniel—who rolls his in response—before taking a deep breath and swinging.

Her ball doesn’t travel as far as their potential clients’, but it does land dead center in the fairway.

“Impressive,” Nathaniel comments lightly as she sashays past him to put the club away.

“Well, I have a foolproof strategy,” she says.

“Which is?”

“Picturing the ball as your face.”

He looks for a second as though he might protest, but decides better of it. “Clever.”

###

“So,” Kennedy Price says once they’re back at the clubhouse after what, to Rebecca, had felt like a never-ending round of golf. “Paint me a picture. What’s West Covina like?”

He directs this to Nathaniel, but before he can say anything, Rebecca pipes up.

“Oh, it’s magical, sir. All the people I know have made their dreams come true there, so I can’t think of a better place for your dream to come to fruition.” She pauses, grinning. “Or should I say _fermentation_?”

Price and Watson share an amused look and a chuckle. Nathaniel chimes in weakly.

“Puns aside,” Rebecca continues, “I can’t think of a more welcoming community. And the tax incentives ain’t bad, either.”

“Sounds like a regular utopia,” Price says.

“Exactly.”

“Nathaniel,” Watson says, “you would agree with that assessment?”

“I certainly couldn’t overstate the beauty of the tax breaks,” he says, earning another hearty chuckle from the men. “And, you know, as far as prosperous communities go, West Covina is a real up-and-comer. For evidence, look no further than Plimpton, Plimpton & Plimpton setting up an office there.”

“Really?” Price asks. “Your dad talks about that acquisition quite differently.”

Rebecca glances curiously over at Nathaniel, who seems to have frozen completely at the mention of his father—expression unnervingly blank.

After a second too long of silence, she jumps back in. “Well, if anything, our ability to spin things in a positive light should give you an idea of what excellent lawyers we are.”

“I suppose that’s one way of looking at it,” Price says.

“Uh, my father,” Nathaniel starts suddenly, a bit too loudly. He coughs once and then, correcting his tone, starts again. “Of course he has reason to be loyal to LA. You know what West Covina has that LA does not, though?”

“What’s that?” Watson asks.

“Spare land and a lack of competition.”

Price and Watson share a look. After a moment, Price says, “Would you two like a tour of our little gem?”

Rebecca sneaks a sidelong glance at Nathaniel. He’s already looking at her, barely containing his sly grin.

“We’d love that,” she answers for the both of them.

###

“I’m as predisposed to love anthropomorphism as the next girl who was raised on the Disney oeuvre, but…I don’t know, something about this is putting me off,” Rebecca says, observing the gift shop shelf full of stuffed toys of the cartoon wine bottle that serves as the vineyard’s mascot.

“I think it’s the eyes,” Nathaniel says, leaning in over her shoulder to squint at one of the dolls. She gets a strong whiff of his cologne and can’t help the delicate shiver or heady wave of memory that overtakes her. “I feel like it’s taunting me for drinking its friends.”

Rebecca snorts, but shakes her head. “No, see, it’s offering up a bunch of grapes. It’s complicit in this whole affair.”

Nathaniel’s eyes cut over to Rebecca’s face on the word _affair_, his jaw clenched as tight as her stomach suddenly feels.

She ducks her head and, keen to change the subject, asks, “You think they’ll sign with us?”

“I have no doubt,” he says, pulling up straight and stepping past her to look at the personalized corkscrews. “We probably don’t even need to carry on with the wining and dining.”

“Probably not,” she agrees.

“Then again, it can really only benefit us.”

“I don’t know about that,” she says. “Buying ten cases of wine, for example, might have been overkill. Or troubling evidence that we’re alcoholics.”

He shoos away her concern with a flick of his wrist. “They run a vineyard, Rebecca. Alcoholics are their bread and butter.”

She cocks her head at him, but he’s still pointedly not looking at her.

“Besides,” he adds, “we’ll get all that money back eventually in legal fees.”

“And now you can host wine club every week for the next decade!” She pumps her fist with mock enthusiasm.

“Or, you know, a less ridiculous proposal: I give everyone in the office a complimentary bottle.”

“That’s a weirdly generous idea,” she says, trailing her finger along the wire bin of bottle stoppers and watching Nathaniel’s back with interest.

“That’s just good business,” he says, picking up corkscrews, reading them, and putting them back down. “Everyone loves free stuff, and happy employees are compliant employees.”

“Ah, generosity with an angle. How very Slytherin of you.”

He turns sharply then, his eyes finding hers like magnets of opposite charge clicking together. It certainly feels like an electrical current passes between them, anyway.

“Well, you know me,” he says, voice surprisingly soft.

“I, uh, I have to go to the bathroom,” she says suddenly, already backing toward the gift shop exit. “I’ll meet you at the car?”

She turns and rushes off before he can answer.

###

“You know, I could have just bought that for you,” Nathaniel says once more as they pull into the hotel’s parking lot.

Rebecca struggles to slide the smuggled bottle of cabernet sauvignon into her briefcase alongside her laptop. She’s not entirely sure why she took it, she thinks to herself, even as the traitorously self-aware voice in the back of her head tells her that she did it to see that mingled look of horror and amused intrigue Nathaniel sometimes gives her, almost against his will—the one he’s been regarding her with since she’d run out of the vineyard’s visitors’ center to find him leaning against the trunk of their rented car.

“Where’s the fun in that?” she asks, forcing the zip closed with one last jerk.

“You’d still have wine,” he says, getting out of the rental and handing over the keys to the valet, “and you wouldn’t have risked undoing a nearly sealed deal.”

“Okay, sure,” she says, sliding out of the passenger seat and hiking her bag up on her shoulder, “but illicit wine just tastes better.”

“_Hmm_,” is his only response, more thoughtful than argumentative, as his eyes slide down the length of her body.

Rebecca’s stomach bottoms out, a trap door giving way to freefall. And that’s before his eyes even make it back up to her own.

That current she’d felt in the gift shop pulses between them again, but this time it’s Nathaniel who shies away from it, clearing his throat and stepping ahead of her to the front desk.

She lets out a long, slow breath as she watches him greet the young man at the counter. After a moment, she jerks, realizing she’s staring, and turns to take in the lobby. A brochure for the local playhouse catches her eye, and she plucks it off the stand, starting to read.

She’s just finished scanning the season’s lineup when Nathaniel’s voice carries over to her.

“…aren’t nearly that nice for that to be the case!”

Eyebrows raised, Rebecca slots the brochure back in place and crosses over to the desk.

“I’m telling you to check again,” Nathaniel says.

“Sir—”

“Please,” Nathaniel says, his voice strained.

“What’s going on?” Rebecca asks, apparently unexpectedly because Nathaniel jumps.

“Maya’s an idiot, that’s what’s going on.”

Rebecca frowns. “I mean, we knew that. How’s it relevant to this poor service worker here?”

The man behind the desk glances up with a nervous smile.

“What are you doing? Look for an extra room,” Nathaniel snaps at him.

“Dude,” Rebecca says, “chill.”

“I can’t chill.”

Rebecca pulls a face at him. “Maybe if you put on your big boy pants and try really—”

“Maya only booked us one room,” he explains, cutting her off, “and—_apparently_—this fine establishment can’t find one measly additional room for us to use because everyone around me is a moron!”

“Oh.”

He lets his head droop back, shaking it with exasperation at the ceiling. “Of course this is what gets you to shut up: the prospect of sharing a room with me.”

“Okay, that’s not—I wouldn’t say—” She stumbles over herself. “If that’s the way it has to be…I mean…”

With a humorless laugh, he asks, “So you’re trying to say you’re fine with this arrangement?”

“‘Fine’ is maybe overstating it, but—” she pauses, glancing at the worker. He’s frowning at his computer. “Yeah. We can make that work.”

Nathaniel scoffs.

“I’m glad to hear that,” the man says, “because it is, in fact, the last available room. So here’s your key and, as an apology for the inconvenience, please enjoy some room service this evening, on the house. You’ll find a complete menu in the room.”

“Great,” Nathaniel says insincerely, with a tight smile for Rebecca. “Thanks.”

###

When they get upstairs, the impulsiveness of agreeing to share a room just to spite Nathaniel catches up with Rebecca.

“Did we know there was also only one bed?” she asks him, stopping just inside the entrance.

“We did not,” Nathaniel says, jaw clenched. “I’m gonna…”

Rebecca spins around and latches onto his arm. “Do _not _go yell at that poor kid again.”

“But,” he says, and gestures at the bed.

“That’s not his fault!” she says, even as her thoughts snag against the solidity of him. A crazed part of her brain suggests that she gives his arm a squeeze.

With an effort, she ignores it.

It gets a little easier when he narrows his eyes and says, “You’re right. I should call Maya.”

Shaking her head and finally dropping her hand, Rebecca picks up her suitcase, shoves it against the wall, and ventures further into the room. “It’s after six. You can’t disturb her at home.

“Pretty sure I can,” Nathaniel says, dropping his luggage down onto the folding rack with more aggression than necessary and unzipping it.

“And I’m pretty sure your anger will keep until tomorrow morning,” she says, flopping down onto the queen bed, arms spread out wide.

“Maybe,” he says, voice low and gentle all of a sudden.

Rebecca lifts her head to find him watching her and feels the electricity buzz to life in her chest.

“So, right,” Nathaniel says, turning back to his suitcase. “I’m gonna go see if this place has a workout room and, um, be back later.”

He fists a change of clothes and is out the door before she can ask why the hell he’d want to work out on top of eighteen holes of golf.

She sits up on the bed, letting the silence settle around her. After just a moment, though, it starts to press in on her, so thick her ears start ringing.

She lunges off the bed for her briefcase, forcing the zip open and jerking the wine out. Setting that aside on the desk, she continues to rifle through the contents of the bag until she finds her silenced cell phone at the bottom.

She has couple Facebook and Instagram notifications, a few texts from Paula, and several unread emails. Nothing from Josh.

Frowning, the desperate desire to hear his voice overtaking her with vigor, she dials his number. She paces along the foot of the bed as it rings and drops down on the edge when she’s eventually sent to voicemail.

“Hey, Josh, it’s Rebecca. Your fiancé.” She pauses, wincing. “I mean, of course. How many Rebeccas do you know, right? Um, anyway! I just wanted to tell you that I love you…So, yeah. I love you. And I’ll talk to you later. Bye!”

As she’s hanging up, her phone buzzes with an incoming text. Seeing that it’s Josh, she opens it, a pleased grin in bloom.

It dies before properly flowering, though, because the message only contains a picture of Josh giving the camera a thumb’s up, a scoreboard that Rebecca can’t read right behind him.

_The basketball dress rehearsal, right._

She replies to request that Josh message her when the game is done and then, with a sigh, calls Paula.

“Hey, cookie,” Paula says, answering after a couple rings. “How’s Brentwood?”

“Oh, you know,” Rebecca says, pleased at how breezy she sounds. “You’ve seen one suburb of Los Angeles…”

“Sounds right.”

Rebecca opens her mouth to ask Paula what she’s up to when she hears laughter in the background.

“Do you have someone over right now?” she asks instead.

“What? Oh, yeah. Just a couple people from law school to celebrate the survival of finals.”

“Ah, a classic college rager.”

“Exactly,” Paula says, a smile in her voice.

Rebecca knows she should excuse herself, let Paula get back to her guests, but she lingers.

“Was there something you needed?” Paula asks after a moment.

“Oh, no, it’s nothing,” Rebecca says. “You have a good time. You’ve earned it.”

“Great! I’ll see you tomorrow, right?”

“Yeah,” Rebecca says, a touch too brightly. She swallows and tries again, “Yeah. Nathaniel and I should be in by noon.”

“Sounds good,” Paula says like she’s not really listening anymore. And sure enough, the line goes dead a second later.

Again, she takes a moment to let the silence wash over her. Then, heaving a sigh, she kicks off her shoes and climbs properly onto the bed. Leaning against the headboard, she scrolls through her emails, barely reading any of them. They’re mostly from Valencia, anyway, and the last thing Rebecca feels like doing is making decisions about her big day.

Listlessness creeps in on her from all angles. Idly, she thinks of calling Heather, but she stalls, wondering if she remembers Heather having an evening class.

(The too-honest voice in the back of Rebecca’s head accuses her of simply not wanting to hear any of level-headed Heather’s commentary about, well, anything currently going on in her life, but Rebecca is more than prepared to ignore that.)

Next, she imagines herself venturing out into the hotel, locating the workout room. She could derail Nathaniel’s workout with a few niggling comments.

Or maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe she’d simply sit off to the side, watching as he works up a sweat. He probably fills out a t-shirt better than most…she can imagine those arms flexing.

Only half-cognizant of what she’s doing, Rebecca opens her phone’s browser, switching to incognito and typing in the name of her favorite porn site. It takes her a while to find a video that intrigues her, mind hazy with her daydreaming, but eventually she picks something, turns up her phone’s volume, and slides a little further down the headboard. As she does, the skirt of her dress bunches up around her hips.

As the shoehorned story starts to come to a head, Rebecca lets her knees fall open and slips her hand past the waistband of her shorts. Given her wandering attention, she’s surprised to find how sensitive she already is. A gasp escapes as her fingers brush her clit.

A few mindless minutes pass as she works herself closer and closer to a climax. In fact, she feels the first rush of full-bodied warmth that usually means she’s close to—

“Absolutely pitiful.” Nathaniel’s voice breaks through the fog of endorphins, and Rebecca rips her hand out from her shorts at the same time she locks her phone on someone mid-moan. “That’s how I would describe this place’s accommodations.”

A moment later, he steps into the main room, dropping the room key on the desk and removing earbuds. Rebecca hurriedly tugs her dress back over her knees and attempts to sit up in bed.

“Uh-huh,” she says, and then flushes a deep shade of red when it comes out breathily.

He glances at her over his shoulder, eyes roving from her mussed hair down to where her toes are curled into the mattress, leaving impressions in the thick comforter. He makes a funny face.

Then, almost comically, realization seems to hit him.

“Well, I’m just going to shower,” he says, jerking his thumb toward the bathroom. “So you can—” He breaks off, looking absolutely appalled with himself.

“Great,” Rebecca says, dragging a pillow over her face. “Thanks.”

“Uh-huh.”

She holds her breath until she hears the door of the bathroom click shut, then groans and pushes the pillow away. Frowning at the ceiling, she feels the tension of unfinished business as present in her neck as in the pit of her stomach. But the idea of touching herself while Nathaniel’s in the shower, possibly imagining her doing the very same…

With a light shudder, Rebecca slides off the bed and quietly pads over to the bathroom door. She stands as still as she can, listening. Definitely not imagining anything she shouldn’t be imagining about a man who isn’t her fiancé.

Her phone chimes from where it’s still on the bed, and she practically jumps out of her own skin. Think of the soulmate…

When she goes to check the notification, though, it’s just another email from Valencia.

Letting out a frustrated growl—and with another glance over at the bathroom door—Rebecca jerks open the drawer on the bedside table.

If she can’t indulge her go-to vice, she’ll have to rely on her backup: time to order food.

###

About forty minutes later—Nathaniel still locked away in the bathroom—there’s a knock at the door.

Rebecca’s just finished tipping the runner when Nathaniel finally pops his head out, wet from his shower and unexpectedly shirtless.

“What’s—?” he asks, before his gaze drops down to the cart. “Ah.”

She freezes, her hands tightening around the handle as her eyes wander.

He’s softer than she’d expected—definitely still solid, muscular. But there’s more to sink her fingers into than she would have guessed looking at him in one of his expensive suits.

To make matters worse, his damp hair flops over his forehead, making him look oddly vulnerable.

“I got you a turkey burger,” she blurts after a moment too long of staring. “Um, no bun.”

His head jerks back. “Thank you.”

She coughs, not sure what to do with his gratitude, and pushes the cart from the foyer into the room.

They move silently around each other, Nathaniel rummaging in his suitcase for a t-shirt and Rebecca uncovering each dish on the cart, trying to decide what she wants to eat and castigating herself every time her eyes wander from the food to Nathaniel. After finally settling on pasta, she grabs the corkscrew she’d requested from the kitchen and uncorks the illicit bottle of wine before holding it up in silent question.

“We have to be up early for breakfast with Price and Watson,” he says disapprovingly.

“You said yourself: they’re practically already in the bag.”

“Which is not the same as actually having signed with us.”

“Come on, dude.”

“No,” Nathaniel says, smoothing the shirt over his stomach. Rebecca’s eyes greedily follow the movement. (_Maybe she should have finished masturbating, after all_.) “It’s unprofessional.”

She snaps her gaze back up to his face and holds his eye as she reaches for one of the little plastic cups sitting next to the tiny coffee maker anyway. “Whatever, daddy’s boy.”

“Why do you feel the need to do that?” His voice is sharp, but she hears the undercurrent of genuine hurt.

She considers playing dumb, but even as her brain urges her to say _I don’t know what you’re talking about_, she hears herself saying far too truthfully, “It’s the quickest way to get under your skin.”

He juts out his chin and stares at her down the bridge of his nose. “And why would you want to do that?”

Rebecca licks her lips and forces herself to maintain eye contact. “It’s in everyone’s best interest if I don’t answer that.”

His brow furrows and he studies her for a long moment before holding out his hand, gesturing for the cup.

She grins, filling it with the wine before handing it over, and then retrieves the second cup for herself.

###

Rebecca’s phone buzzes next to her on the comforter, and she sets her mostly-empty tin of pasta on the nightstand before picking it up.

“Talking to the Flip-Flop?”

She glances up into Nathaniel’s eyes—he’s watching her from the desk chair, long legs stretched out in front of him on the bed—and narrows her own at him. “Why?”

“You keep checking your phone and looking disappointed, so I’m just assuming.”

“Well, you’re wrong,” she says with a smug grin, despite the fact that just a second ago she’d felt a pang of annoyance that Josh still hadn’t texted her any kind of follow-up after the picture. “If you must know, it’s my wedding planner that keeps emailing me.”

“Ah,” he says, grinning back. “So it’s your wedding to the Flip-Flop that’s disappointing you.”

She tugs the pillow out from under her ass and throws it at him. It sails past his head as he’s taking a sip of wine, landing on the desk, and he shoots her an unimpressed look over the rim of the cup.

“It’s not the wedding,” she says, irate. “Planning a wedding in two weeks happens to be extremely stressful, is all.”

He raises his eyebrows. “I think that’s why most people take a little longer.”

The back of her neck prickles with heat, and she takes a gulp of wine, the only thing she can think to do with her hands.

“Maybe I like being unconventional,” she says after swallowing.

He scoffs.

“What now?”

“I don’t buy that.”

“Okay, well, there’s nothing to buy,” she says, gesticulating at herself, “because I’m telling you a truth about myself.”

“No,” Nathaniel says, shaking his head with infuriating evenness. “You’re telling me a lie you’ve been telling yourself for so long, it only feels like a truth.”

She blinks, absorbing the impact of that, and he smirks at her, sharp and smug.

Rolling her shoulders back, she manages to sound impressively unaffected when she responds a beat too late, “You don’t know me, Plimpton.”

He cocks his head challengingly, yet his eyes remain unnervingly tender as he asks, “Don’t I?”

“No,” she tells him honestly enough.

“But he does?” Nathaniel asks, nodding at Rebecca’s phone.

“He…” Rebecca starts say, but hesitates.

“He’s the man of your dreams. Yeah, yeah,” he finishes for her, taking a gulp of wine.

She knows she should let it go, allow that to be the answer whether she intended it to be or not. But she finds herself protesting anyway—“That’s not what I was going to say”—because the most shameful part of her, the part that doesn’t feel at all guilty for that kiss in the elevator, likes the version of Rebecca Bunch that asserts herself in small glimpses whenever Nathaniel Plimpton III presumes to understand anything about her better than any other she’s tried on.

He raises his eyebrows at her. “No?”

“No.”

When she doesn’t elaborate for a moment, he gestures for her to go on. She grins.

“It’s not about Josh knowing me; it’s about me knowing our story. Knowing us. It’s about me knowing _him _best.”

Nathaniel pulls a face like he’s smelled something bad. “Is there really much to know? He’s vapid.”

“Oh, come on,” she says, shaking a head at him. “Don’t pretend to know the first thing about Josh.”

“Again, what’s there to know but emptiness?”

Rebecca tuts. “You’re relying on your biased perception.”

“So? I’m supposed to rely on your completely objective take above my own perception? Sounds even more flawed.”

She scoffs. “_So_, jealousy never provides a clear picture of your rival.”

“Oh, we’re rivals now, are we?” Nathaniel’s clear blue eyes bore into hers as he sits up a little straighter in his chair. “I was under the impression the match was settled. Nothing left to be won.”

Rebecca swallows hard, feeling too warm all of a sudden. “That’s right.”

He slouches back down with a nod. “There you go, then.”

Before she can linger too long on why his evident disappointment has made her stomach tighten, she pushes on. “I’m just saying, you should be open to the possibility that there’s more than meets the eye.”

“For the Flip-Flop?”

“Everyone’s more complicated than they first seem,” she says. “Even you, daddy’s boy.”

“Come on,” he says, leveling her with an unimpressed look. “Just because you’re jealous of excellence, doesn’t mean—”

“Jealous?” Rebecca throws her head back with laughter. “My dad’s not coming to my wedding, and I still don’t envy a single thing about whatever weird complex you have going on with yours.”

“Wait,” he says, “your dad’s not coming to your wedding?”

She shakes her head and then swigs her wine. “He had some excuse…a remote construction site or something like that.”

“Would he have been able to come if the wedding wasn’t so soon?”

“I don’t know,” Rebecca lies, staring into her cup. “Maybe.”

Nathaniel’s sympathetic silence starts to grate on her after a minute, so she drinks down the rest of her wine and stands abruptly from the bed.

This, perhaps unsurprisingly, turns out to be the wrong move. Completely unbalanced, she stumbles forward a step, and then starts to tip toward the mattress.

For some reason, Nathaniel’s response to this is to jump out of the chair and catch her around the upper arms.

“Dude,” she says, trying to hold onto the flare of anger that’d driven her into action, but it gets considerably harder when she looks up into his face and her breath gets caught somewhere between her lungs and her throat. She gives a little cough before asking, “What are you trying to do? Save me from death by mattress?”

“I—” He closes his eyes and gives himself a little shake. His fingers flex around her arms. “I’m drunk.”

She snorts. He grins, eyes drifting open.

“That, uh, illicit wine is really something, huh?” she asks.

His gaze slides down to her lips. Barely a moment later, he releases her and takes a big step away. “We should go to bed. Big day tomorrow.”

“Right,” she says, watching his back as he starts stacking plates on top of each other on the food cart.

When he doesn’t look back at her, she takes a steadying breath, and then goes to her suitcase, grabbing her pajamas and toiletries before slipping into the bathroom.

As she’s applying toothpaste to her brush, there’s a light knock on the door.

“Can I come in?” Nathaniel asks.

She pops her toothbrush into her mouth and unlocks the door. It swings open to reveal him holding up his own.

Nodding, she steps back away from the sink and, avoiding eye contact, he gives her a tight smile as he bends over the basin, running his toothbrush under the tap.

Absentmindedly, her eyes trace the curve of his back as she scrubs at her teeth. _Is it uncomfortable to be that tall?_ she wonders, lingering on the tension in his well-muscled shoulders.

He stands up abruptly and steps away, making her visibly start. Silently, he raises his eyebrows at her.

Ignoring this, she steps forward and spits, rinsing out her mouth as she tries to put the weight of his reciprocal scrutiny out of her mind.

“All yours,” she says, grabbing her clothes from the day and shuffling out of the bathroom. After stuffing the clothes back into her suitcase, she flips back the top sheet and duvet to rearrange the pillows to her liking.

Nathaniel’s still in the bathroom by the time she’s settled herself under the covers, and she watches the closed door for a moment before snatching her phone off the nightstand.

Josh still hasn’t texted her back and, briefly, she considers turning off the device out of spite. But then she imagines him alone in her bed, forced to spend the night without her, and opens their chat with an inward frown.

_Hey_, she types, _I love you_.

Nathaniel exits the bathroom just then, and Rebecca finds herself quickly locking her phone, as if she’d been caught with her hand in the cookie jar before dinner, and setting it aside. Which is just absurd. She’s allowed to text her soon-to-be husband whatever and whenever she wants. Who’s going to stop her?

Her eyes track Nathaniel as he straightens up the desk, makes sure the cork is securely in the wine, and then shuts off the overhead light, but she’s quick to turn away from him onto her side when he comes to sit on the edge of the bed. A moment later, he switches off the bedside lamp, plunging the room into darkness.

Rebecca’s body is one, big exposed nerve ending as she listens to him slide under the duvet. Each jostle of the mattress as he shifts around trying to get comfortable could be an earthquake set in motion for as intently as she feels them.

And then there’s nothing but the cacophony of their out-of-synch breathing.

Rebecca rolls onto her back. Nathaniel coughs. She squeezes her eyes shut. He kicks up his legs, shifting the blanket.

Then, stillness.

“Oh, my god!” She bursts after just another second. “You radiate an absurd amount of body heat.”

He volleys back immediately. “And I can already tell you snore. Your breathing sounds like a freight train.”

“Fuck you,” she says, flicking her foot out in his direction. He’s closer than she expected, and her cold toes come in contact with the warm, bare skin of his leg.

“Jesus,” he says, jerking. “Your feet feel like _that _and you’re complaining that I’m too hot?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“You should be thanking me.”

“Not likely.”

“Fuck _you_, then.”

Rebecca giggles and, even though it’s still too dark to tell for sure, she can practically feel Nathaniel’s responding smile.

Some too-big emotion swells up inside her—a tsunami threatening to swallow her whole—and she shifts back onto her side.

She’s not sure how much time passes as she lies there, letting wave after wave of that unnamable feeling she’d also felt that night in the elevator lap at her, but eventually it fades into the background with Nathaniel’s steady breathing and the groan of the air conditioner kicking on and falling silent again and again.

When she’s been nearly lulled to sleep, Nathaniel speaks again. “Rebecca?”

A thrill zings from the soles of her feet up to the crown of her head, but she wills herself to remain still, to keep her breathing even.

He rolls over, getting closer to her, and it becomes incrementally harder to breathe at all.

“Maybe you were right,” he whispers, sounding almost like he’s talking to himself, “when you said I didn’t know you.”

Rebecca wets her lips.

“And I actually don’t mind admitting that you’re right because it’s better that way. Getting to know you is…” He breaks off with a deep breath. “And if he doesn’t appreciate that, then… What the hell are you even _doing_? Idiot.”

Rebecca swallows hard. When he flings himself down onto his back, she realizes the last bit had been directed at himself.

The emotion wins out just then, whipping up a tropical storm inside her. Call it her tendency toward self-destruction or the primal part of her that’s in it for the chase awakening, but she gives herself over to it willingly.

###

The dryness of her throat rouses Rebecca sometime in the middle of the night.

At first she resists, nuzzling deeper into her pillow and, in doing so, she feels her nose brush against something solid and warm. Coming even more into consciousness, Rebecca finds her arm wrapped around someone’s torso and her knee sandwiched between their thighs.

“Mm, Josh,” she mumbles into his back, tugging him a little more securely against her. “I knew I was just imagining… Things are good between us.”

A moment later, though, her sleepy smile fades as she remembers where she is and who she’s with. Suddenly she’s much more awake, staring wide-eyed at the bristly hairs on the back of Nathaniel’s neck.

She wills herself to feel disgust—or, at the very least, shame—at being this close to him, but her sleep-slowed brain doesn’t muster up anything more than _warm _and _nice_.

Thankfully, on the tails of that, thoughts like _gotta pee_ and _water _start to cut into the cocoon of coziness. Carefully, she eases her leg free, causing Nathaniel to shift forward and making it easier for her to slip her arm out from under his.

Traitorous goosebumps crawl up her skin as the phantom brush of his fingers lingers around her wrist.

In the bathroom, she winces at the brightness of the overhead light and can’t look herself in the eye as she stands in front of the sink, waiting for the tap to run a little cooler. When the temperature is to her liking, she sticks her head under it and swallows as much water as she can, gulping it down like she can wash away the memory of how musky Nathaniel smells in the crook of his neck or the pleasant squeeze of his muscular legs around hers.

Once she’s finished using the restroom, she tiptoes back to the bed and gingerly folds herself under the covers. She curls up as close as she can to the edge of the mattress.

The warmth trapped under the blankets is cloying and leads her easily back toward slumber. Just as she’s about to fall through to unconsciousness once again—when, conveniently, she can plausibly excuse herself as simply an object of circumstance—Nathaniel rolls over toward her, wrapping an arm around her waist and drawing her in close.

She nestles against him, shivering as his stubble scrapes lightly against her shoulder, and then sinks into sleep.

###

Sunlight, bright and insistent, streams into the room, making Rebecca’s eyes ache gently. She groans, and casts her arm out for the _warm _and the _nice_, only to find the cool emptiness of sheets.

“…Make sure you’re back before seven, but no sooner than six.”

The thud of a door falling closed and Nathaniel’s voice push away the last clinging feelings of doziness. She sits up in the bed and rubs her eyes.

“I don’t care. Make it work,” he says in response to something said on the other end of the line, glancing over to see her awake and then looking swiftly away again. “I have to go.”

“You’re up and at ‘em,” Rebecca says through a yawn.

“I want to be checking out and on our way to the restaurant in no less than twenty minutes,” he says in the same sharp, businesslike tone he’d been using on the phone.

She groans and starts to protest.

He holds up a silencing finger—though he’s still not looking at her—and says, “That wasn’t a request.”

Grumbling, she slides out of bed. “I liked you better when you were sleeping.”

“What did you say?”

“I said, ‘As you wish, your most honorable sir’.” She bows.

When she rises out of it, he’s glaring at her through narrowed eyes. Something passes over his expression when their eyes meet, but he turns away before she really even registers the change.

“I’ll meet you in the lobby,” he says, grabbing his bag. The door clicks shut a second later.

Rebecca spares a longing look for the bed before trudging into the bathroom in an effort to do as she’s told, emotional whiplash be damned.

###

“Sixty-three emails,” Valencia says, charging into Rebecca’s house only minutes after she’s gotten home from work. “I sent sixty-three emails. And how many times did I hear back from you?”

Rebecca takes a step back from her bedroom doorway, shaking off feelings of guilt that she’s not more upset to find that Josh isn’t there. “Hi, Valencia.”

“That’s right,” Valencia says, plunking her laptop case down on the islet. “None.”

“I was too busy being impressed by your restraint,” Rebecca says, batting her eyelashes.

“Oh, sure, make jokes about the most important day of your life.”

Rebecca pouts out her lower lip.

“Stop trying to be cute,” Valencia says, narrowing her eyes. “You can’t charm your way out of this.”

“Are you sure?” Rebecca asks, using her baby voice.

Valencia growls.

“Okay, okay.” Rebecca holds her hands up in surrender. “You’re right, and I’m sorry. Let’s go through everything right now. Come on, lay it on me.”

“We’re in a time crunch,” Valencia says, unpacking her laptop. “So I just went with all the options I would have chosen for myself.”

“Oh. Smart.”

“I know,” Valencia says, just a touch defensive. “This way we can avoid your questionable taste.”

Rebecca accepts the dig with a small smile. She had ghosted Valencia last night, after all.

“You know,” she says. “It’s a shame that I can’t also have your rocking body, since I’m already getting the wedding of your dreams.”

“Flattery won’t make me forgive you,” Valencia says, rolling her eyes. But she also can’t fully repress her pleased grin.

“It kinda will, though, right?” Rebecca asks, leaning across the islet to wiggle her finger in Valencia’s face.

She swats it away. “Speaking of my rocking body and how good it would look in a wedding dress, Lucia will be here any minute.”

Rebecca feels a warming sensation in her sternum, and sighs with relief. Thinking about her wedding dress still brings her joy. She must not be completely defective.

“Are you about to puke?” Valencia asks, eying her with worry. “Because you’d better not get any on my laptop—I just cleaned the keyboard.”

“No, silly,” Rebecca says. “This is what happy looks like.”

Valencia raises a skeptical brow.

Before Rebecca can go check a mirror and see what Valencia’s talking about, there’s a knock on the front door.

“I’ll get it,” she chirps, practically skipping into the foyer.

It’s not Lucia standing there on her patio, though.

“Dad?”

“Hi,” Silas says, shifting his weight uncomfortably.

“Oh, my god, Daddy,” Rebecca says, flinging her arms around him. “What are you doing here?”

“I was, uh, I was flown in,” he says, patting her gruffly on the back.

She squeezes him tighter and holds him there for several moments. His words catch up with her, though, and she drops back down onto flat feet. “Flown in?”

“This,” he says, holding out a plush, anthropomorphized wine bottle, “is supposed to explain things.”

Shocked and delighted as she is, it takes a minute for her brain to run through the implications of the toy.

“Oh, I…” She takes the wine bottle from her dad’s hand. “Is he…?”

“Waiting in the car to drive me to my hotel,” Silas confirms, nodding toward the street.

“Rebecca?” Valencia asks. “What is it? What’s going on?”

“Okay,” she says, addressing her dad. “I’ll be right back, like literally in one second. Do not move, okay?”

“Sure,” Silas says, stuffing his hands deep in his pockets.

Barefoot, Rebecca runs out toward the street, spotting the rented car instantly. She can see Nathaniel through the window, looking down at his phone. Grinning, she lurches the door open and starts tugging on his arm.

“What the—Rebecca, stop that,” he says, trying to jerk out of her grip.

“Get out, get out, get out,” she chants until, rolling his eyes, he finally unbuckles his seatbelt and steps out of the car.

She throws her arms around his waist as soon as he’s upright, hugging him as hard as she can.

“What are you doing?” he asks, sounding appalled but also out of breath.

“Thanking you,” she says into his chest.

“That’s not…” She hears him swallow before finishing, “necessary.” They stand there for a beat before he adds, “You can let go now.”

“Not gonna until you hug me back.”

He grunts. She flexes her arms.

With a sigh, he drapes both arms around her shoulders, his fingers grazing the skin between her shoulder blades and sending a shiver down her spine. She’s about to pull away, reassert some of the chilly distance that’d sprung up between them on the car ride back home, but then he presses his cheek into the top of her head and she finds herself thinking, _another minute couldn’t hurt_.

But she’s not really sure how much time passes before a car door slams closed nearby and Rebecca spots Lucia walking toward them.

“I’ve gotta go,” she says, stepping away from him. He lets go of her immediately, so she’s not sure what compels her to explain, “Wedding dress alterations.”

“Ah,” he says with a small frown. “Good luck with that.”

“Better luck now, thanks to you,” she says, backing toward her patio.

He waves that away.

She stops walking, and Lucia passes her with a little wave. “Seriously, Nathaniel, this is really special.”

He shakes his head. “It’s all in my self-interest, actually.”

“How so?”

“Let’s just call it a guilt-assuaging thing,” he says.

She cocks her head at it. “Not a claim-you-know-me-better-than-I-think-you-do thing?”

His eyebrows climb his forehead even as he flashes her a coy smile. “That’s just a bonus side-effect.”

“Rebecca!” Valencia’s voice carries from the house. “We’re starting now!”

“I should…” She gestures behind her.

“Fine,” he says, only sort of succeeding in reverting back to a formal, boss-and-employee tone. “See you tomorrow morning at nine sharp.”

“I don’t know,” she says. “I was thinking of starting my honeymoon a little early. Which should be fine, right? Because I definitely proved my loyalty to the company with that whole absurd trip we just went on. I mean, I snagged the client and everything. You owe me.”

“Even so,” he says, eyes narrowed but lips twitching around a smile, “I’ll see you tomorrow morning at nine.”

“You’re the worst boss ever.”

“And you’re the worst employee ever.”

“Fair,” she says with a laugh. “That’s fair.”

“Rebecca!” Valencia appears suddenly. “Get your ass inside.”

With a final wave at Nathaniel, she turns and follows Valencia inside, smiling to herself. It’s not lost on her that this is the most excited she’s felt about her wedding since before the stupid kiss in the stupid elevator.

She tries not to dwell on how this, too, comes at Nathaniel’s hands. _Because_, she thinks with a cheerful kind of blind optimism, _surely that means nothing_.


End file.
